The armed security guard who ended up on an elevator with President Barack Obama had not actually been convicted of a felony, as The Washington Post, which first broke the news, previously reported.
The incident happened on Sept. 16 when the man, a private security contractor with the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, was removed and questioned by Secret Service agents after he was on an elevator with Obama.
The Post, which had originally reported the story, said that agents asked the contractor to stop using a camera phone he had to videotape Obama. When the elevator doors opened Obama and the majority of his Secret Service detail left with Obama but a few agents remained to question the man. They found on a national database that he had prior arrests.
The Post had originally reported that the contractor was found to have been a convicted felon. He was not. The Post published a correction on its original story in addition to its new story. TPM has also amended its original writeup of the story to reflect the new information.
The contractor was fired on the spot when his supervisor found out about the incident. He was asked to hand over his gun, which he did, and which surprised the agents who didn’t know he was armed while in the elevator with Obama, according to the Post.
My, how the mighty Post has slipped under new ownership.
This story, which seemed much more threatening to the President in initial reports, appeared not so much at all in this morning’s reporting of the old ‘news’.
In modern jounamalism’s perverted pyramid news style the ‘who, what, why, when, how’ check list is often surpassed by the more exciting ‘whatever’ check in first reports and further burnished with inventive ‘some people’ quotations.
I’m surprised they even bothered following up, to correct their error. Which honestly, did they even take five minutes to confirm their story, or could they not wait to publish their latest breathless expose?
It didn’t make any sense that a convicted felon could get a permit to carry.
Questions? I got questions!
How do you ‘just end up’ on an elevator with the POTUS?
And why wouldn’t you ask before capturing video of the POTUS?
Why would you persist when the SS says ‘stop’?
Then the guy loses his job?
There’s got to be more to this.
jw1